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Bethesda Modding Diary - 04 June 2022


gregaaz

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Well, I was originally planning on saving this for tomorrow, but I'm kind of having writer's block so instead of writing prose I'll install some more mods. Thanks to the case study I did earlier today, our starting mod count has grown a bit.

 

  • Skyrim
    • Mods installed: 1,677
    • Plugins active: 1,638
    • Last Load Order Index: E5
  • Fallout
    • Mods Installed: 475
    • Plugins active: 537
    • Last Load Order Index: A5

 

Snap To It

Spoiler

We'll start out with a couple of related Fallout 4 mods. Specifically:

 

 

As the names suggest, all of these mods add snap connectors to building pieces so you don't have to painstakingly align the parts manually. I'm not expecting any big issues with installing these mods, but let's see what they contain.

 

On review, these mods are all asset replacers and do not edit the plugins at all. They do have a number of conflicts with Workshop Rearranged, and on review I see that mod also adds snap points. So we are going to hide the conflicts with that one and only use the new meshes that aren't already covered.

 

image.png.db16f5c2844fd2c0063284f7b149c07d.png

 

Since there aren't any plugins involved, that's all we have to do!

 

Raider Variety

Spoiler

Bull's Raider Outfits caught my eye with the way it increases the variety of the... raider outfits. Since I don't expect to see any reduction in the number of raiders I fight in the future, having more visual variation for them should be a nice enhancement. Let's see how this mod looks.

 

Just the opposite of the snapping mods, this one is just a plugin - no assets. It's an uncompacted ESP file with 16 records (groan!) so the first thing we'll do is compact and ESL-flag the file. It has no errors or deletions, but it does manage to serve up 4 ITMs (25% of the records in total!). I don't want to rip on the author too much, since they obviously put time and effort into this, but it underscores the importance of taking the time to clean up your work before publishing.

 

The remaining files have a number of conflicts, mostly with Armor Keywords and other equipment related mods. I didn't run into anything that didn't have a very clear solution and I patched out all the conflicts. 

 

image.png.805f38f59a49d642c0b972a39795c7f3.png

 

Let's visit a raider location and take a look at what we see. 

 

ScreenShot257.png.49ab9f918681f220b84c85f62067a489.pngScreenShot256.png.3d72a5a56d4f101977ea2b82021d78eb.png

 

I can see some of the new items showing up, but they're not drowning out the classic leveled list. That looks about right.

 

Visual Improvements from JS

Spoiler

JohnSkyrim is a prolific modder who produces a lot of very high quality visual enhancers. Today, we're going to install the following:

 

 

In terms of assets, the only conflicts were with vanilla, USSEP, SMIM, or broad-based replacers, so we let JS win all of them. Only one mod had a plugin - the instruments. Basically, what we've got here is an update to the quest so that it uses the unique models from this mod rather than the generic instruments.

 

image.png.d92b80bce3dbff52e971947c7b5fec4f.png

 

We'll patch this by merging the changes.

 

image.png.ddd8bbff44bfd956503dc3995cf7de44.png

 

Now I do want to check LOTD to see if I need to update the displays for these instruments. However, it seems that while LOTD has many Lutes to display, Finn's Lute isn't one of them. That's probably because in vanilla it uses a generic object.

 

image.png.66de2f27036f38ba4352031c8d14614a.png

 

 

Consequently, I think that's all the work we need to do. But we're not done with JS yet. We've also got...

 

 

Barenziah's Crown is the easiest one, it's just an update since I already have the mod installed. It's not clear from the description what this changes, but I'm assuming its optimizations. The mod has a plugin, but it's 100% novel records with no patches or overrides, and it's already compacted, so it doesn't require any attention.

 

The Ioun Stones are interesting as they're an equipable item and they look great. However, there's a little bit of derpery with their slot assignments that we need to look at.

 

image.png.c1c04d6d5bcebe0a3b8e128ea4ce6398.pngimage.png.267c2f01667c80653f6838baa8d2c33f.png

 

55 and 57 are fairly harmless conflicts, the 56 and 58 are higher profile and more prone to issues. Moreover, the SPID patch uses all four, so we can't just pile them into every single slot. I'm going to change 56 to 60 and 58 to 61, which should be safer. This'll require changes to both the nif files and also to the plugin.

 

Or... maybe not. Rather curiously, the nifs do not have any dismember data, which is where you'd expect to find the slot assignments.

 

image.png.06d941224487a3d1957512e04d1e9d4f.png

 

image.png.7030c63ae17c17aa02325d76a51f4fdd.png

 

Now that we've updated the plugin, let's install the SPID module and see how it looks in the game. For most of the generic characters, we're going to go in and edit the SPID to greatly reduce the percentage of the items appearing.

 

image.png.3bb4396981be29753fe7dc440d8db502.png

 

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Oh no, oh no, what is this crap? This mod works by replacing vanilla outfits? What a monumentally bad way to write a SPID. I'm going to have to totally rewrite this. I should note that the SPID is from a different author, so don't take it as a reflection on JohnSkyrim's excellent work.

 

image.png.841122912bb0dfa59f8161f911ae546d.png

 

So right away, I see this silliness:

 

image.png.ce003cafd65d505797b0202205672763.png

 

Just another reminder of why to clean up your mods before publishing, as you can see here Troubles of Heroine has a wild edit on this farm interior section that's caused a gap in the floor.  Oh, by the way, wondering why I haven't shared any beauty shots of the stones? Its because the SPID is even more fucked up than I previously thought and is just more or less not compatible with anything that alters the vanilla outfits for the various mage NPCs. So I'm going to have to go back and rewrite it again. At this point, I might as well have just done it from scratch.

 

image.png.0dcc7325872407325b392a9b37aae4cf.png

 

There's the wild edit. We'll just patch it out, and then we'll completely rewrite the SPID distribution file.

 

image.png.d805c73e0ec0e7ba9f621da77c708cb7.png

 

In any event, this one still isn't working so there's something deeper within it causing problems. I'm going to call it a night for now and look at it with fresh eyes in the morning.

 

...And The Santa Hat?

You'll have to wait till tomorrow ?

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After some study of other SPID files I have, I think I know what the issue is, so we'll give this another shot tomorrow. 

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